Words by Chelsey Sanchez

Gentle reader, there are too many to count

Whether it’s 1813 or 2024, you have to be on the lookout for red flags on the dating—or marriage—market. This is part of what makes Bridgerton such a mind-bogglingly addictive watch: What better way to kill a few hours on a Sunday night than psychoanalyzing the Regency era’s upper crust?

At face value, the Bridgerton family is full of exactly the kind of gentlemen and ladies whose wealth and breeding make them the most sought-after members of the ton. But they’re also kind of assholes. Daphne’s charming demeanor is immediately offset by her astounding lack of boundaries in bed. Colin’s insecure middle-child complex makes him behave in ways that hurt the people closest to him. And Anthony in particular needs to just, like, get a grip.

Orbiting the Bridgertons are other nobles laden with their own emotional baggage, from the feisty Kate Sharma to self-proclaimed wallflower Penelope Featherington. And lest we forget, the Bridgerton cinematic universe also includes the origin story of Queen Charlotte and King George. Even for royals, romance doesn’t come easily.

With the first installment of season three now gracing our Netflix queues, it was only a matter of time before I found a suitable way to rank a dozen of Bridgerton’s major players. My qualifications? One, I spend far, far too much time thinking about fictional characters than a person in their late 20s should; and two, I’ve been to therapy. (Simon, Duke of Hastings, take note!)

Without further ado, I present to you my official Bridgerton rankings based on a thorough audit of each character’s most glaringly red—or, sometimes, green—flags.

12. Daphne

Daphne has this thing about boundaries, in that she doesn’t respect them. Let’s put aside for a second that she betrays Simon’s trust by rifling through his belongings and unearthing a traumatic story about his father he wasn’t yet ready to talk about. It should permanently sever any trust between them when she sexually assaults Simon by forcing him to ejaculate inside her—even as he profusely objects to her advances. Daphne apologists will cry, “This is a historical romance!” or “She just discovered what sex was five seconds ago!” But do those excuses really change the optics? It’s true Bridgerton is a historical romance, yes—but 18th-century England didn’t have glitter, waist-choking corsets, or a diverse royal court. If the Shondaland series can take creative liberties with those anachronisms, why not apply the same standard when it comes to modern-day conceptions of consent? Besides, was there really no other way for Daphne to figure out what Simon actually meant when he said he couldn’t have children? Perhaps by—I don’t know—simply talking?

11. Anthony

Season two is my favorite so far, so it pains me to place Anthony second to last on this list. But the facts stand. He spends most of his screen time being an aggravating, arrogant, and tyrannical misogynist. In season one, his inability to consider the opinions and desires of his mother and Daphne leads to near social ruin for his entire family. He also callously discards Siena, only to come crawling back as soon as he sees her with another man, one willing to actually fulfill her desires. The season-two version of Anthony isn’t much better. His hunt for a wife lays bare his primitive perception of women, as the viscount views most of the ton’s debutantes as one dumb monolith whose sole duty is to rear his future children. At the same time, he demands perfection from them, despite being so absurdly imperfect himself.

10. Colin

Any man who keeps company with other men who revel in toxic masculinity is no real man to me. You might be inclined to say that Colin isn’t responsible for the things his friends say or do, but it’s clear to me that their worldview has seeped into his subconscious, fomenting insecurities and cruelty in the same way misogynists are bred on Reddit or QAnon forums. It’s more than the way he mean-spiritedly dismisses Penelope as a potential bride for a couple of laughs in season two. As seen in teasers for the second half of season three, Colin also now has trouble conceptualizing his place in the life of a woman who doesn’t need a man to take care of her. “What good am I to you?” he shouts at Penelope, with the voice of a man bereft over his emasculation. Your middle-child complex is showing, Colin, and I don’t like it!

9. Eloise

Eloise, we get it. You’re not like other girls. For all of her soapboxing over feminism and gender equality, the second-born Bridgerton daughter is not a girl’s girl. From her perch on her high horse, her fellow debutantes’ worst sin is earnestly looking for husbands in a society where women simply don’t have the means to live easily if they’re not married. The horror! The spite she exhibits toward these women might be more usefully aimed at the system that chains them all together, or maybe at literally any male character in the ton. Might I recommend Audre Lorde, an actual feminist, for some required reading? Never mind that Lorde wasn’t born till over a century later—someone needs to show Eloise this quote right now: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”

8. Simon

Daddy issues aren’t so much a red flag as they are a sign that warrants pity. Throughout season one, the Duke of Hastings makes it clear he has unresolved childhood trauma that gets in the way of him forming healthy, lasting relationships. And while I can’t fault Simon for his feelings of inadequacy as a product of his father’s cruelty, I can point to his failure to adequately address those issues. At nine and 20 years, Simon needs to learn how to put on his big-boy pants and stop sabotaging his future as a means of running away from his past.

7. King George

It’s hard loving a mama’s boy! After the king’s cameos in seasons one and two, our first fleshed-out introduction to George is in 2023’s prequel series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Love Story, in which the poor farmer can’t seem to catch a break. Personally, I am immediately put off by any man who quickly cowers at the expectations and demands of his overbearing mother, as George so often does in the series’ first episodes. I also found myself resenting his tendency to retreat to self-inflicted solitude in moments of distress. The king doesn’t know how to trust that Charlotte will not abandon him when faced with his crises, inadvertently infantilizing her by making the decision to live separate lives before she can truly decide for herself. Of course, living with undiagnosed manic episodes—as modern-day psychiatrists suspect George was—in a time period that had no real language for mental illness must have been devastatingly lonely. In the absence of healthier coping mechanisms, I cannot fully hold his flaws against him.

Bonus green flag: When at last George accepts that he is worthy of the unconditional love Charlotte offers him, he makes headway in taking his rightful place in her life. In doing so, he is willing to flout tradition and protocol (as king, mind you) to support Charlotte when she needs him most (e.g., being in the delivery room as she gives birth to their first son).

6. Benedict

As the second-oldest Bridgerton son, Benedict hasn’t quite found his place in the world yet. And while no one should be chided for still figuring out who they are, his way of soul-searching is just kind of messy. From engaging in affairs with various respectable women in the ton to dropping out of art school five seconds after being admitted, Benedict traipses through life without intention or motive. These are benign qualities to have on their own, but a nightmare to deal with in a relationship. I guess it’s a good thing we haven’t embarked on his season just yet.

Bonus green flag: Benedict is tolerant and accepting toward everyone around him, regardless of who they are or what they do. He affords artist Henry Granville the discretion to live his life as a gay man, and is perhaps the only man in his family to take women seriously. In hindsight, maybe this trait is less of a green flag than it is just the bare minimum.

5. Francesca

If your house were burning and the third Bridgerton daughter had to choose between saving you or her piano, she’d probably choose the piano. Just kidding (kind of). Poor Francesca, being an introvert in a household prone to chaos. She strikes me as the kind of person who would get easily overstimulated and abandon you at social functions at the drop of a hat.

4. John Stirling

The Earl of Kilmartin is a man of few words . Perhaps too few words? While Francesca is clearly smitten with his predisposition to respond with the minimum syllables possible, that tendency could be slightly off-putting to others.

Bonus green flag: On the other hand, we love a man who doesn’t talk!

3. Queen Charlotte

There’s no question that Queen Charlotte can be … a lot. When we first meet her in season one, Charlotte is drunk on her own authority—and, to put it generously, a little self-obsessed. Her infatuation in her own sense of righteousness becomes more understandable in the prequel series, Queen Charlotte, where we meet her as a young and skeptical bride leaving her home country of Germany to become the queen of England. How could she overcome that kind of pressure, other than by full-on embracing bravado?

Bonus green flag: She will stand with you between the heavens and the earth! A true ride-or-die, Charlotte is loyal to a fault—and it’s that exact devotion, paired with unshakable self-confidence, that makes her a stalwart partner of the British monarch. The queen is the queen for a reason.

2. Kate Sharma

Kate has the worst case of eldest daughter syndrome that Netflix has probably ever seen (and I get to say that, as an eldest daughter myself, so don’t come for me). Daughters of this rank often don’t know how to concede when they’re in the wrong. This is how we got to the point where her younger sister, Edwina, nearly married a man visibly and desperately in love with the Sharma who wasn’t walking down the aisle. Also, eldest daughters love to get a little snappy and condescending when verbally sparring against someone who harbors an opposing opinion. Is Kate right most of the time? Well, yes. But, Kate, girlie, we still gotta learn how to communicate respectfully.

Bonus green flag: Like Queen Charlotte, Kate is severely loyal to those she loves. Whatever self-imposed burdens she places upon herself as a sacrificial oldest daughter, she also carries some stereotypically good traits, like being dependable, trustworthy, and protective.

1. Penelope Featherington

Pray you don’t ever do something embarrassing in front of Penelope Featherington, because she will tell the entire group chat about your fuck-up (but probably won’t tell you to your face). We all have our secrets, but it seems a little unfair that she gets to keep hers close to her chest while broadcasting everyone else’s. Have you ever heard of a diary before, Pen? Hm?

Bonus green flag: That said, I’m of the mindset that a little gossip never hurt anyone. Other than having a scathing pen, the youngest Featherington daughter is for the most part quite kind and warm. Living most of her adult life invisible and stuck to the wall, as she bemoaningly describes herself in the first episode of season three, has instilled in her a kind of empathy and graciousness the rest of the ton could learn something from. Also, she’s obviously a go-getter. In a world designed to make a woman’s survival dependent on the men around her, Penelope decides to become the master of her own destiny. This is what real self-made success looks like.

The second part of Bridgerton season three comes out Thursday, June 13, on Netflix.

This article originally appeared in harpersbazaar.com